Monday, January 23, 2006

Watching King Kong

So I went to see the movie last night. I've never seen a worse crowd in a theater: cell phones bleating, toddlers running back-and-forth and up-and-down the aisles, an entire family talking loudly and without pause, and foil wrappers “going off” constantly like noisy party gizmos. I'm sad to say that the primates in the room made Kong look like a churlish monk on the screen.

Early in the movie, someone's demonic child tripped over a foot in the aisle above me and starting wailing pitifully while his father told the poor guy attached to the foot that he was a “fucking loser”—apparently for having a foot. It was then that I had a “What would Buddha do?” moment, that is to say, I could either feel love in my heart and project that love out to all of my “fellow travelers” in the room and find nirvana in non-being, etc., or I could just leave. I decided to do neither.

(Buddha says, “If we can eradicate desire, all sorrows and pains will come to an end.” Unfortunately, His All-Mighty Encumbrance failed to disclose that he was smoking something potent when he said this. I know, because eradicating my desire to see King Kong didn't make any of the &%@~!$ Neanderthals in the theater die a sudden and horrible death—or even just disappear.)

Instead, I decided to split my time between watching the show around me and the one on the screen, because sometimes that's what writers are supposed to do. I did come away from the experience with some good material. Too bad that my fellow moviegoers will never be the ones to read it. Ah, well, they're probably illiterate anyway.

So what about King Kong? I have nothing to say about it. It wasn't a movie. It was a cinema event. And that's not a compliment.

I suppose I should write a few lines about it, if only for the experience, except that I already have a backlog of better movies to review. Maybe I'll do a two-part special: Jack and Ennis Battle King Kong for the Hearts of Moviegoers Everywhere. (That's tortured, I know. But it's also ironic, don't ya' think.)